Why do we think Curiosity found an old Mars riverbed?
The Curiosity rover team announced yesterday that they'd found the mission's first potentially habitable environment on Mars: an ancient river bed. But why do they think flowing water created the formation?
What exactly did the rover find? Curiosity's telephoto camera snapped shots of three rocky outcrops not far from the rover's landing site inside Gale Crater. One of them, called "Goulburn", had been excavated by the rover's own landing gear. The other two were natural outcrops dubbed "Link" and "Hottah". All three, and Hottah in particular, were made of thin layers of rock that had been cemented together. |  |
Robots to keep farmed fish fit and healthy?
The fish we eat for dinner may soon be fit and healthy, not because they spend their lives swimming out in the open ocean, but because a robot of sorts gave them a daily workout in an aquaculture pen.
Fish farms are far from perfect. Some research has shown, for example, that sea lice from salmon farms are detrimental to migrating wild salmon. And inside the farm, mortality can creep up to around 20 percent due to illness and wounds.
Fish farms are far from perfect. Some research has shown, for example, that sea lice from salmon farms are detrimental to migrating wild salmon. And inside the farm, mortality can creep up to around 20 percent due to illness and wounds.
Fish farms are far from perfect. Some research has shown, for example, that sea lice from salmon farms are detrimental to migrating wild salmon. And inside the farm, mortality can creep up to around 20 percent due to illness and wounds.
Fish farms are far from perfect. Some research has shown, for example, that sea lice from salmon farms are detrimental to migrating wild salmon. And inside the farm, mortality can creep up to around 20 percent due to illness and wounds.
Marine plants can flee to avoid predators, researchers say
Scientists at the University of Rhode Island's Graduate School of Oceanography have made the first observation of a predator avoidance behavior by a species of phytoplankton, a microscopic marine plant. Susanne Menden-Deuer, associate professor of oceanography, and doctoral student Elizabeth Harvey made the unexpected observation while studying the interactions between phytoplankton and zooplankton.
Their discovery will be published in the September 28 issue of the journal PLOS ONE.
"It has been well observed that phytoplankton can control their movements in the water and move toward light and nutrients," Menden-Deuer said. "What hasn't been known is that they respond to predators by swimming away from them. We don't know of any other plants that do this.".
Their discovery will be published in the September 28 issue of the journal PLOS ONE.
"It has been well observed that phytoplankton can control their movements in the water and move toward light and nutrients," Menden-Deuer said. "What hasn't been known is that they respond to predators by swimming away from them. We don't know of any other plants that do this.".
Aww... Looking at cute pictures could make you better at work
Forget PowerPoint: It turns out the secret to improving productivity at your job might be puppies.
A new study out of Hiroshima University found that people performed a variety of tasks faster or more accurately after looking at pictures of kittens and puppies. These test subjects also beat out others who looked at pictures of adult animals or gourmet meals instead. "Viewing cute images improved performance on tasks that required carefulness," researchers concluded. |  |
Feeling Down? Spirituality Can Boost Your Mood
In 2008, then-presidential candidate Barack Obama got himself into trouble by saying "bitter" voters "cling to guns or religion" in response to hard times. Obama later apologized and recanted the statement, but new research suggests he may not have been entirely wrong.
People do turn to spirituality after a bad day, according to a study published online Aug. 1 in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. And good news for spiritual folks, it works. |  |
Tiny medical electronics dissolve harmlessly inside your body
A team of researchers has created a form of electronics that can be implanted in a patient's body then forgotten about — because the implants will dissolve within a week or two. Such safe and hassle-free electronic monitoring could revolutionize medical care.
Implanting devices in the body is nothing new, but usually the risk is only worth it for life-threatening problems: a pacemaker, for instance, or an insulin pump. But there are lots of situations where constantly monitoring some vital statistic would be useful. A thermometer or blood sugar monitor could help make sure a post-operative patient is safe during the critical first week — but the stress and cost of the implantation and removal operations can't be justified.
Implanting devices in the body is nothing new, but usually the risk is only worth it for life-threatening problems: a pacemaker, for instance, or an insulin pump. But there are lots of situations where constantly monitoring some vital statistic would be useful. A thermometer or blood sugar monitor could help make sure a post-operative patient is safe during the critical first week — but the stress and cost of the implantation and removal operations can't be justified.
Summer heatwave on Mars (with temperatures reaching a 'scorching' 6C)
Early weather reports from Mars are showing some surprisingly mild temperatures during the day.
For through-out the Curiosity rover's mission, its on-board weather station - the 'Remote Environment Monitoring Station' - has measured temperatures rising to above 0C for more than half of the days since Curiosity landed on Mars. Mars has reached above 6C - and it may even reach the 20C as the Martian 'summer' continues, making Mars very exciting from a habitat point of view. It also follows on from the discovery that Mars, in all likelihood, had waist-high streams running across its surface. |  |
Moon? Mars? No, it's seaward ho!
THE vastness of Earth's oceans and the limited extent of our knowledge and occupation of them often invites comparisons with space. But they are much more attainable than the moon or Mars. Hence the enduring fascination with "seasteading", the idea of building permanent settlements at sea (see "Brave new sea worlds to redefine society").
Those who push the idea are often dismissed as libertarian fantasists. The seasteading movement has its fair share of those, but it is also home to pioneers longing to conquer a new frontier.
Those who push the idea are often dismissed as libertarian fantasists. The seasteading movement has its fair share of those, but it is also home to pioneers longing to conquer a new frontier.
Swift Action Needed to Save World's Declining Fisheries
OSLO (Reuters) - Swift action is required to save many of the world's fisheries that are declining faster than expected, a study in a leading scientific journal shows.
A recovery of fisheries could increase worldwide landings by up to 40 percent, helping to feed a global human population that is forecast to rise from 7 billion to 9 billion between now and 2050, according to the report in Friday's edition of Science.
Coastal fisheries and sharks are among those hardest hit by overfishing, while flounder, herring and sardine are suffering less, the scientists wrote in the journal run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
A recovery of fisheries could increase worldwide landings by up to 40 percent, helping to feed a global human population that is forecast to rise from 7 billion to 9 billion between now and 2050, according to the report in Friday's edition of Science.
Coastal fisheries and sharks are among those hardest hit by overfishing, while flounder, herring and sardine are suffering less, the scientists wrote in the journal run by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Asteroid Dust Could Fight Climate Change on Earth
To combat global warming, scientists in Scotland now suggest an out-of-this-world solution — a giant dust cloud in space, blasted off an asteroid, which would act like a sunshade for Earth.
The world is warming and the climate is changing. Although many want to prevent these shifts by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases that trap heat from the sun, some controversially suggest deliberating manipulating the planet's climate with large-scale engineering projects, commonly called geoengineering. |  |
Scientists keep a wary eye on hazardous Chinese volcano
A very hazardous volcano at the border of China and North Korea is growing more active, and might erupt in the next few decades, researchers studying the area say.
About 1,100 years ago, the Changbaishan volcano in northeastern China erupted, shooting superheated flows of ash and gas up to 30 miles (50 kilometers) away and blasting a 3-mile-wide (5 km) chunk off the tip of the volcano. The explosion, known as the Millennium eruption because it occurred close to the turn of the first millennium, was one of the largest volcanic events in the last 2,000 years. |  |
Scientists measure the mouth of a monster black hole
For the first time, scientists have peered to the edge of a colossal black hole and measured the point of no return for matter.
A black hole has a boundary called an event horizon. Anything that falls within a black hole's event horizon — be it stars, gas, or even light — can never escape. "Once objects fall through the event horizon, they're lost forever," Shep Doeleman, assistant director of the MIT Haystack Observatory and research associate at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, said in a statement Thursday. "It's an exit door from our universe. You walk through that door, you’re not coming back." . |  |
B.C. mayors vote to decriminalize pot: That was the easy part
B.C. municipal leaders voted Wednesday for a resolution that calls for the decriminalization of marijuana, but they’re facing a major hurdle: convincing Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government to change the law.
Harper has said previously he’s not interested. But former B.C. attorney-general Geoff Plant urged delegates at the Union of B.C. Municipalities earlier this week to join a “growing chorus of voices” across Canada to show the prime minister that across the country, “people are calling for change.” While pot decriminalization falls under the purview of the federal government, he said, B.C. municipalities “all govern and live with this disastrous failure of public policy.”. |  |
The Great New England Vampire Panic
Children playing near a hillside gravel mine found the first graves. One ran home to tell his mother, who was skeptical at first—until the boy produced a skull.
Because this was Griswold, Connecticut, in 1990, police initially thought the burials might be the work of a local serial killer named Michael Ross, and they taped off the area as a crime scene. But the brown, decaying bones turned out to be more than a century old. The Connecticut state archaeologist, Nick Bellantoni, soon determined that the hillside contained a colonial-era farm cemetery. New England is full of such unmarked family plots, and the 29 burials were typical of the 1700s and early 1800s: The dead, many of them children, were laid to rest in thrifty Yankee style, in simple wood coffins, without jewelry or even much clothing, their arms resting by their sides or crossed over their chests. Except, that is, for Burial Number 4. |  |
Skydiver aims for supersonic plunge Oct. 8 from record altitude of 23 miles
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The countdown is on for skydiver Felix Baumgartner.
In just two weeks, Baumgartner will attempt to go supersonic when he jumps from a record altitude of 23 miles over New Mexico. Project managers announced Tuesday the feat will take place Oct. 8. The Austrian parachutist jumped from 13 miles in March and 18 miles in July. This time, he hopes to break the all-time record of 19.5 miles set in 1960. A giant helium balloon will hoist a pressurized capsule with Baumgartner inside, dressed in a pressure suit. |  |
Hummingbirds make flying backward look easy
Animals that move backwards usually require a lot of energy, so Nir Sapir from the University of California Berkeley, USA, was surprised when he realized that hummingbirds execute this maneuver routinely. Wondering how hummingbirds perform the feat, he analyzed their flight and the amount of oxygen they consume and found that reversing is much cheaper than hovering flight and no more costly than flying forward.
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Bionic legs could soon be controlled by thoughts alone
Many wheelchair users have never walked, but now a robotic exoskeleton could allow them to move around upright for the first time. Last week at the Wellcome Collection in London, Sophie Morgan, who was paralysed in a car accident, demonstrated bionic legs after just two short practice sessions.
The exoskeleton, developed by Richard Little and colleagues at Rex Bionics, has lithium batteries that can power up to 2 hours of walking.
The exoskeleton, developed by Richard Little and colleagues at Rex Bionics, has lithium batteries that can power up to 2 hours of walking.
Who Needs a Boss When You Have Your Co-Workers?
Steven Johnson is optimistic about the future. But, in order to ensure progress going forward, he insists that we harness the power of the peer network.
In his new book, Future Perfect 
, Johnson highlights the success of collaborative efforts such as Wikipedia and Kickstarter and advises us to use similar decentralized networks of people to help solve problems in the coming years. He calls his worldview “peer progressivism.”What is flawed about the way we, as a society, think about progress? |   |
Honey Bees Fight Back Against Varroa
The parasitic mite Varroa destructor is a major contributor to the recent mysterious death of honey bee (Apis mellifera) colonies. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal Genome Biology finds that specific proteins, released by damaged larvae and in the antennae of adult honey bees, can drive hygienic behavior of the adults and promote the removal of infected larvae from the hive.
V. destructor sucks the blood (hemolymph) of larval and adult bees leaving them weakened and reducing the ability of their immune systems to fight off infections. Not that honey bees have strong immune systems in the first place since they have fewer immunity genes than solitary insects such as flies and moths. These tiny mites can also spread viral disease between hosts. This double onslaught is thought to be a significant contributor to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). |  |
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